Obama's fuel efficiency rules have reduced pollution, created jobs and saved energy. We owe it to our workers and our children to stay the course.

Anyone who’s shopped for a new car lately knows the industry is changing fast. Today’s models are safer, more reliable and better to drive than ever before. They’re also more efficient. New cars, SUVs and pickup trucks get, on average, 25 miles per gallon, about 23 percent more than a decade ago.

Markets, technological innovation and worker know-how are delivering the gains. Smart federal policy, though, is playing a vital role. We need to keep it that way.

Unfortunately, President Trump's administration is working to weaken federal clean car and fuel economy standards that are already saving the typical driver hundreds of dollars a year at the pump, cutting pollution and driving innovation and jobs nationwide. Our families, workers and country would be far better off if the administration would reconsider and maintain globally-leading standards.

The 2012 standards call for new cars, vans, pickup trucks and SUV’s built by 2025 to hit an average of about 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving conditions (this is equivalent to the frequently cited regulatory average of 51.4 miles per gallon once various technical credits are taken into account).

Setting goals is how we lead

Improved fuel economy would save our families more than $1.7 trillion at the gas pump over the life of these vehicles while also reducing tailpipe pollution, according to estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which together created the standards.

Now the administration is claiming the agencies “set the standards too high.” It proposed Thursday that the average miles per gallon for cars reach 41.7 mpg by 2025, instead of 54.5 mpg. This is a dramatic decrease and would short circuit gains. Setting goals and achieving them is what we do in this country. It’s how we lead. And that’s exactly what the industry is doing, aided by the certainty and predictability the standards provide.

Over the past decade, automakers have invested more than $63 billion — that’s including 258 separate investments in 100 engine, transmission and assembly plants across the nation — in part to more rapidly design and produce increasingly efficient vehicles and technology. Additionally, suppliers have invested billions in manufacturing the advanced components and materials that enable us to use less fuel. That’s good work for nearly 300,000 Americans in more than 1,200 factories and engineering facilities in 48 states.

The ArcelorMittal integrated steel mill in Cleveland, for example, was mothballed a decade ago. Its future looked dim. Now it’s one of the world’s most productive steel mills, where members of United Steelworkers Local 979 are producing advanced steel that combines high strength with light weight to help our cars go further on a gallon of gas.

That’s important. Getting more miles per gallon helps reduce our exposure to global oil price shocks we can neither control nor predict. It also reduces the dangerous carbon pollution that’s driving the central environmental challenge of our time — global climate change.

All of this gets much worse, unless we cut the carbon pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels. The clean car and fuel economy standards are helping us do that, while at the same time helping us bring back America’s manufacturing leadership and jobs. We owe it to our workers, and we owe it to our children, to stay the course.

The administration will be taking comment on this proposal online, in writing and at events across the country. Tell the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department — and your members of Congress — to support the progress we’re already making and keep the standards in place.

In the auto industry, as in all others, you can’t see the road ahead by looking in the rear-view mirror. The future of cars, at home and abroad, is smarter, cleaner and more efficient. We can’t afford to cede that future to our competitors in Europe and Asia. Let’s build, right here in this country, the smartest, cleanest and most efficient cars anywhere in the world. And let’s maintain the forward-looking policies that help us get the job done.